How Gratitude Uplifts and Heals ~ The "Everything Cure"

We entered the 18-day transitional period January 18th, between the end of the energetic season of the Water Element (Winter) and the beginning of the energetic season of the Wood Element (Spring) beginning on the February 5th. This transitional period is one of the four 18-day seasonal energetic transitions of the year called Earth. Each energetic season has a set of energetic influences to which each one of us is more or less sensitive too. For the people that stay very grounded and balanced during the Earth, this 18-day period can be an extremely creative time for them, but for those of us who have an Earth imbalance, then the energetic season can ruffle up your feather’s, enhancing worry and impeding decision making.

In the Series of Wei-Chi articles, emphazising the teaching of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) concerning the importance  of our emotional life on our state of wellness and health. Positive emotions have a favorable effect on our vitality while negative ones are very destructive to our physical and mental health in addition to damaging our emotional life.

Being reminded that the key to enriching and nourishing our relationships with other human beings is an attitude for gratitude. It seems simple enough, however, but given the load of concerns, if not outright worries most people experience in this tested time and age, it is easy to feel like we are being attacked from various sides. We may even find little that immediately comes to mind for which we have a hard time sustaining an attitude for gratitude.

Some people are blessed with an innate sense of self to be thankful for almost all people and events in their lives, but for most it requires a moment of deliberate self-reflection to focus on people, animals, things, conditions, and places for them to acknowledge and express appreciation. It is so important that is had been referred to as a “Cure for Everything,” and “It is free!”

A feeling of gratitude is a blessing but it needs to be expressed to actually become cultivated and fully beneficial in your life. Appreciation is an even more profound aspect of gratitude. It causes us to go beyond the surface of “thank-you” and feel more deeply.

Feeling gratitude for anything at all is a near instant remedy for feeling low. Sometimes I just state that I am thankful for a tank of gas, or even reminisce on or where the tank even took me! Feeling appreciation for anything at all causes us to truly pause and deliberately savor the beauty of life. It can begin with the simplest of things such as a smile, a butterfly, a tasty bite of food, a hilarious tv show, or even a beautiful color. Appreciation has the potential to take us to the more meditative state, which I prefer to call Soliciting Solitude, where healing begins to occur, “the junction point between mind and matter, the point where consciousness actually starts to have an effect,” according to Deepak Chopra.

It is this state of awareness and feeling that becomes the “Best predictor of good relationships,” in our lives. It contributes to a balanced and peaceful state of mind and it supports our vital energy helping us to maintain a stronger immune system, radiant health  chi and sense of overall well-being.